


We count moments like heartbeats

by midnightflame



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Birthday, Birthday Sex, Flirting, Galaxy Garrison, Kissing, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pre-Kerberos Mission, galra imprisonment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-25 19:32:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13841520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightflame/pseuds/midnightflame
Summary: Shiro recounts several of his birthdays, and how Keith had come to be part of each.“Two. Just two.” Keith wrinkles his nose a little at that then levels his embarrassment with an exhale. “Can we just settle on the fact that you and I will travel space together?”Shiro huffs out his laughter at that. “Yeah, we can settle on that.”Beside him, Keith shifts. He leans in closer, their shoulders nearly brushing, but it’s the way Keith’s pinky finger coils around his own that has his heart stopping like a driver caught off guard by a red light. There’s no resultant crash, but Shiro swears he can still smell smoke on the wind. Maybe that’s what happens when a heart goes up in flames.





	We count moments like heartbeats

**Author's Note:**

> Put a halt on some of my other works to get this one out today because I do love Shiro and definitely wish him the happiest of birthdays! Hope you all enjoy it and thank you for reading!

What if we didn’t measure birthdays by the candles on our cakes? What if we found them to be made up of moments instead, counting them to each beat of our hearts instead of waiting for that one singular second where we could snuff out flickering flames like hopes were ever built on such concepts? The sputtering out of light, I mean. Who has ever looked at the stars and decided to drown their desires in the darkest bits of black space had to offer instead? No. We spend our lives looking for the spots that flash like sunlight cresting over mountains, waiting for the moments gold drops into the valleys and awakens something within us. 

We grow comfortable with the dark. We learn to accept it, to even see by it at times, but we do not bury our hopes in its soil. 

So what if we didn’t count down our lives like that? What if instead, we let memories spill across our heads. You know, that box of polaroids tipped over, its pictures scattering across the floor, and with each one we reach to collect, we let our gaze linger over the glossy surfaces and delight once again in that captured moment.

*

“Kerberos.”

Shiro tips his head to the night sky and traces the outlines of Ursa Major. There’s movement beside him, tentative in the way that seeking out something can sometimes be. Keith has been like that lately, ever since Shiro burst into his room late one afternoon sporting a grin that threatened to take over his face. He’s certain it had at least planted its flag of unrelenting joy upon him because he could feel that grin reaching for his eyes, putting that ‘I see the world anew’ glimmer into his gaze. And he did see the world a little bit bigger then. 

There was fear, yes, but it was the sort that always came with anything uncharted in life, and it could not devour the excitement he felt parading around in his soul 

Takashi Shirogane, pilot for the Kerberos mission, the farthest endeavor humankind would make into known space. And ever since he had spilled those words to Keith, this stream of nonsense that somehow made perfect sense to them both, he had noted the strange hesitation that would sometimes take Keith’s actions into its grasp. 

He can see it now in the part of lips and the restless tapping of fingertips against the rooftop floor. It’s like the word _Kerberos_ had hung so heavy it had left indelible proof of its weight in the way Keith’s mouth continued to remain ajar. Shiro finds it a bit cute, which he thinks he shouldn’t but he does. He finds a lot about Keith cute though, and right now, he doesn’t feel like shielding his heart from all the ways Keith’s mere presence can pierce it. 

“I’ll take you there,” Shiro says, pulling his gaze from Keith and returning it to the stars above.

“Where?”

He doesn’t miss the soft incredulous huff that rides on that simple question.

“The launch site.”

Keith sucks in a breath at that. “Is that even allowed?”

A fair follow-up, but one Shiro simply laughs at because what is Keith but the closest bit of home he’s found in all these past few years. “Yeah,” he says, smiling, “I can take you there.”

When he turns his head to look at Keith again, Shiro finds himself met by a pair of violet eyes blown wide by a strange sense of wonder. Like he had just told Keith that aliens existed and they knew all about the human heart and could love it as fiercely as they loved the space they traveled. 

“Up there too,” Shiro continues. He kicks his head towards the sky with a laugh. “Or maybe you’ll be the one taking me there, and I’ll simply be your co-pilot.”

A blush suffuses across Keith’s cheeks like dawn burning through the last of the darkness. He can see the red of it by the small camping lantern they’ve set behind them. It offers just enough light to see the best parts of the world by, or so Shiro thinks. Keith drops his gaze to the space between them, and in the span of a second, a smile starts to blossom.

“I’ll always be your right hand, Shiro. I don’t need to lead some expedition or anything like it if I can go with you,” he says quietly, as though the night might not keep all their secrets. 

Something catches in his heart then. A thought maybe, snagged on some emotion, its edges a little jagged because the newly broken into are always like that. It strikes him hard - what it all means, what _this_ could all mean. He swallows around his own feelings, wonders if there are moments that could be more right than this one he’s sitting in currently. Keith glances up at him, this quick little flicker of movement, then he’s back to staring at the space between their bodies. He’s not in his cadet uniform, though few are after hours (the same hours they should be confined to their dorm rooms and Shiro routinely liked to ignore when it came to _them_ ), with the exception of his boots. Shiro didn’t have time to ditch his own uniform, having come directly from another debriefing, but he’s opened his jacket to expose his undershirt and rolled his sleeves, and it leaves him feeling as free a pair of jeans and a simple T-shirt. None of the frill. None of the fuss.

But Shiro likes to attribute that to Keith. 

Because there’s freedom in the hours they spend together, outside of the rigor and control that the Garrison’s expectations use to bind them all. The same sort of freedom that laces his blood with excitement for the future. 

“We’ll be up there together one day, Keith. Though I wouldn’t go selling yourself so short on who might be playing what role up there. I’ve told you before, and I’ll tell you again - you have the talent to change the whole fabric of this program.”

“Shiro, c’mon. . .”

“I mean it. You’ve already broken a few of my records. Have a little more faith in yourself.”

“Two. Just two.” Keith wrinkles his nose a little at that then levels his embarrassment with an exhale. “Can we just settle on the fact that you and I will travel space together?”

Shiro huffs out his laughter at that. “Yeah, we can settle on that.”

Besides him, Keith shifts. He leans in closer, their shoulders nearly brushing, but it’s the way Keith’s pinky finger coils around his own that has his heart stopping like a driver caught off guard by a red light. There’s no resultant crash, but Shiro swears he can still smell smoke on the wind. Maybe that’s what happens when a heart goes up in flames.

And now. . .now it’s his turn to blush. He curls his finger around Keith’s until they both settle there locked around one another. They’re looking at the sky - he and Keith - counting stars or wishes or breaths; Shiro doesn’t know really. But the world feels electric around him and his body feels light, and it makes him think that Keith is the one keeping him tethered here to his real self. 

It goes like that throughout lives. There are the people who anchor you down beneath the depths, those who hollow you out to nothing, and then there are those like Keith who somehow bring you back to balance. Light enough to ascend, but with just enough weight to keep you from breaking into a million particles of light. 

“Happy birthday, Shiro.”

*

What if we measured our birthdays by the hopes we still carried?

*

There is no one here who knows, and Shiro considers that a bit of a blessing. Even so, as he enters the holding cell, all eyes lift to him and a collective sigh of relief washes over the prisoners held there. The Champion returned, and in one piece no less. At least, that is how it appears to them, but again what do they know?

They talk at times of the things to they do know, however. Of the planets they called home and the people they called family, and how the Galra managed to cut into their existences like cosmic shrapnel, blowing their known worlds apart. But there are moments when a certain fondness takes over as one memory or another resurfaces, and lips find they can still smile. Wistful little curves that soften hearts trying to harden.

That’s always been an odd concept to him: the stone heart. A pretty thing perhaps, but it cannot beat, and a heart that does not beat does not know life. Better then to armor it, layer piece by piece the steel that would help keep it whole. And one day, when the world showed itself open to the sound of its beating once more or a soul brave enough to lift each metal plate came along. . .then would be the day of discarding the unnecessary things. 

A heart though. . .that’s vital to life. 

Tonight, however, Shiro does not see those smiles. He sees relief, and he sees their hope, and he wants nothing more than to sink into a corner with the quiet for his only real company. They let him move, deference in their motions as heads bow and lips part with _welcome back_ 's filled with awe and wonder. 

He has earned himself a name that’s not his own and Shiro doesn’t know if it’s worth bearing. 

A curt nod to them all seems to settle his cellmates. He exhales heavily as he lowers himself to the ground and sets his head back against the wall. That’s when he closes his eyes.

Another breath. Another flash of arena lights and the soul-scalding roar of the crowd. 

Another breath and there is only darkness.

Another breath.

Before him, the sky grows wide as Earth’s prairies. Star by star, the constellations flicker into being. He outlines each one, settling into their familiarity. His heart rate begins to slow; his wounds ache a little less. It’s not the scent of fresh blood that lingers in his nose, but the faint whiff of desert blooms on the wind. He remembers the way the breeze would ruffle his bangs and how natural it seemed to tip his face and close his eyes as it washed over him. 

_Happy birthday, Shiro._

He remembers how Keith had done the same thing and how the moonlight had bathed his face. Remembers how at that moment he had sworn to himself that when Kerberos was nothing more than a notch in his flight experience belt, he would come back home and make good on all the unsaid that sat between them. He remembers how Keith’s pinky finger had tightened around his own, inexplicably at that same moment, and how there was a time once when he wasn’t afraid of the things that made his heart hammer out its beats. 

Another breath.

Shiro feels his lips curve and lets the longing take his heart. There it will feed the fires for the fights of tomorrow.

*

What if we counted down the years in our lives by the moments that made us smile? If we forgot the mortal reminders of candles glued down by icing, the scars that marked our existences, and instead, remembered our years by the seconds of laughter we shared, the number of sunlit beings who made it all worthwhile?

*

“No. . .no . . .nonono. . .Shiro!”

His name jumps out with a peal of laughter that leaves him breathless and grinning like a man about to give madness a name. Not that ‘tear the world asunder’ sort of madness, the one that drives men to do the unspeakable, but the sort of madness that courts joy with all the explosive energy it can contain. 

Beneath him, Keith is still laughing through his litany of _no_ ’s and _not again_ ’s. He says those words, but Shiro can see the challenge in his eyes, bright and beautiful. Such a vivid lavender that it erases the pain the memory of purple had once tried to carve into him. It’s easy to get lost in Keith’s gaze with its burning desires, its fight and its fury, its honest love. Shiro dips his head and steals Keith’s words with a kiss. It’s a bit of a battle, Keith still murmuring those words until he relents then gives in fully to the act. Concession comes with fingers sliding up the back of his neck and a leg wrapping around his waist. Shiro drops his hips and rolls them against Keith’s until a moan breaks between their mouths and leaves Keith gasping against his lips.

“Shiro. . .”

His name again, now steeped in a quiet plea. Shiro kisses Keith again, draws the act of it out slowly like wishes from a dreamer’s soul. He counts one for every year he’s lived, shifting to catch Keith’s lower lip between his teeth. A nip, gentle, then another kiss to the corner of Keith’s mouth. The fingers in his hair tighten around the longer strands but don’t tug. With his other hand, Keith sets his palm to the space over Shiro’s heart. Fingers curl in against bare skin, but it’s not hesitation that Shiro feels in their touch. It’s a moment taken, etched with all the fine detail memory sometimes surprises us with. Shiro can see it in the way Keith studies him then, how their eyes meet, and questions get asked and answered in the span of a heartbeat. His fingers unfurl. Keith begins dragging them down his chest, this slow progression that raises goosebumps over his arm and causes his core to tighten with anticipation. 

“Is this what you imagined?” 

Shiro cants his head at that, then presses a light kiss to Keith’s temple. “I’ve imagined a lot of things. . .”

A smile briefly pulses over Keith’s lips. His fingers keep drifting lower while the ones tangled in Shiro’s hair unclench and retreat to the base of his neck instead. “Us, then. This.”

 _This_.

The thing that wrote promises on Shiro’s heart before his feet had ever touched Kerberos. The thing that fed hope and found new ways to tear into it when the universe’s distress call made heroes of them all. 

_This_. This thing that brought him to this moment and made ashes of regrets. Shiro clears his throat with a smile. When he shifts his weight, the mattress creaks, and they both try to stifle their laughter at the sound. Their eyes meet. Shiro reaches up to brush the sweat-damp hair from Keith’s forehead. He’s beautiful, always has been, but there’s something in the sight of Keith now, stretched out under his body, unafraid and teasing the desire still burning within him, that sears that thought into his mind. 

Every bit of them laid bare, years past the due date Shiro had put on that initial promise. 

But love, he has found, doesn’t always sit on the shelf waiting to expire like milk and eggs. At least, not a love like this, the cosmic sort that has its beginnings and its ends in the energy of _them_. 

“I don’t know,” he breathes out, honest. “It’s better in so many ways, but exactly like I’ve dreamed of. . or dared to dream of. . .”

That gets Keith smiling. Shiro feels the blush hit his cheeks but has no time to contemplate its heat. Because Keith is kissing him then, lips still curved against his own, and there’s laughter promised somewhere in the midst of it.

“Happy birthday, Shiro…”


End file.
